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Show HN: A free collection of maps for every country in the world, in 11 sizes
- rkv 13y agoWhy not vector format?
- robinhood 13y agoWell, I created them one year ago using Fireworks. I didn't understand the importance of saving them in .svg back then. Now I do :-) I'm planning to export all the vectors to Illustrator, then saving them in .svg, then putting them in Github too.
- jjsz 13y agoI prefer SVG because of Inkscape. Hopefully you can find separate states / municipals / counties from the original file I submitted...
- kgmpers 13y agoTurn them into .svg, then load them all into http://icomoon.io/app/ http://icomoon.io/app/, and release it as an icon font set.
- aw3c2 13y agoThat's been done years ago http://www.dafont.com/geobats.font http://www.dafont.com/geobats.font
- roel_v 13y agoYou didn't seriously trace all maps in Fireworks, did you? Do you realize you can download shapefiles for all countries from multiple places on the net, and then render them at all desired sizes and styles with an afternoon worth of programming?
- robinhood 13y agoYeah - I've been really dumb on this one, I know :-)
- bodnerdan 13y agoThe map for Austria (https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/blob/master/europe/at/1024.png https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/blob/master/europe/at/102...) doesn't depict Austria, but its state Carinthia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carinthia_(state) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carinthia_(state)). Otherwise, I like your project and the initiative of open sourcing it. Could be a nice resource for making a geo-quiz or similar.
- robinhood 13y agoSorry for the mistake, will fix this.
- Spikefu 13y agoAlso, the one for gb shows Northern Ireland. Great Britain doesn't include any of the Irish island. That would be the United Kingdom. There's a quick overview showing the differences here: http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/britain.html http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questi... Nice work though. I can see a lot of ways these could be useful.
- handelaar 13y agoNope. The ISO3166 code for the United Kingdom is 'gb'.
- nandhp 13y agoThe icon for VI (US Virgin Islands) shows only one of the three islands (St. Thomas). St. John is incorrectly included with VG (British Virgin Islands), and St. Croix appears to be missing entirely. For a better diagram, see, for example, the US Virgin Islands quarter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2009_USVI_Proof.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2009_USVI_Proof.png I could nitpick about Florida and North Carolina, too (missing the Keys and the Outer Banks), but those issues seem relatively minor.
- rowanseymour 13y agoAlso this isn't Rwanda: https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/blob/master/africa/rw/256.png https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/blob/master/africa/rw/256... (can't figure out yet what is actually is...)
- xfax 13y agoGreat effort! Unfortunately, you're likely to get a bunch of requests for changes since there are a bunch of places where geo-political boundaries are murky at best. For example, your map for India (https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/blob/master/asia/in/1024.png https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/blob/master/asia/in/1024....) shows the boundary as the line of control with Pakistan and China, instead of the boundary which India claims (based on pre-war demarcations, http://www.mapsofindia.com/images2/india-map.jpg http://www.mapsofindia.com/images2/india-map.jpg)
- robinhood 13y agoOh man I know. I really struggled for some maps... should I include them or not? It depends on the current world policy, if the world is at peace or at war. Anyway, for most countries, it's still ok :-)
- nostromo 13y agoIt'd be a fun project to change political boundaries, location names (Sea of Japan / East Sea), and map orientation (who is at the center?) based on each visitor's geolocation. The world: according to you.
- kmfrk 13y agoRule #1 of maps: There are no unpolitical maps.
- teeboy 13y agoIf someone uses that map of India in any application or project targeting India, it is bound to attract a sea of protests. I didn't even know about the existence of this map till college and Google. Overwhelming majority of Indians don't know about your map and would likely see it as justifying Pakistani aggression.
- jjsz 13y agoThere's an issue with Puerto Rico: https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/issues/1 https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/issues/1.
- nathanb 13y agoI'm not sure that you know what the word map actually means. This is a free collection of country images, or silhouettes, but only in the loosest possible definition of the term could these be considered maps. Not trying to belittle your efforts; merely your advertising.
- hnriot 13y agoyeah, exactly. I was helping my 6th grader last night on "Earth Science" (scoped at California) and we covered maps and their definition. One of the primary prerequisite for a map is having physical features like rivers, mountains etc.
- jameshart 13y agoSo, to be clear, you're saying this is not a map: http://cdn.myzipcodemap.com/statemaps/CA.PDF; http://cdn.myzipcodemap.com/statemaps/CA.PDF; this is not a map: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/standard-tube-map.pdf http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/standard-tube-map.pdf ...
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoThe first one won't load for me. The second is a map, IMO... as it contains "physical features" like the train tubes, wheelchair ramps, bathrooms, etc
- jacalata 13y agoThat certainly wasn't the definition in my high school geography classes, where we specifically covered maps that featured only political boundaries (and coincidentally, showed continental boundaries). It is also not a definition I could find in Wikipedia,Merriam-Webster, etc just now. Do you have any cites stronger than some 6th grade class?
- ccernaf 13y agoMaps are just visualizations that focus on one attribute almost everything has: a spatial location. They don't need to show rivers or other physical features. A map of voting patterns for instance doesn't really have physical features. If you distort it to reflect population, you have an even looser map whose only tie to the world is the relative location of one area to another. Physical maps like those that the USGS provide are just a tiny sample of the breadth of maps out there in the world. There are many, many really cool, non-traditional maps out there.
- seszett 13y agoFYI, tf lacks several territories (it only depicts the main island of Kerguelen) but above all, Asia is probably not the continent I would have chosen for a collection of islands near Antarctica. It's usually (as in timezones, for example) put in an "Indian" group which also includes Madagascar, the Maldives, Mauritius, and other Indian ocean territories. Another point: it's not actually a list of countries but a list of entities that have iso codes, ie. French overseas departements are listed separately from mainland, except for Corsica. Looking at the France map, I find that the boundaries are a bit out of shape, as if they were a bit "deflated" (the Ardennes point, Crozon peninsula, or Corsica cape, are very thin lines, and even Normandy looks skinny). I'm not sure why.
- hnriot 13y agoI think if you read all the comments you'll realize why you couldn't sell these. They aren't maps, they are riddled with errors, they are not even in a vector scalable format.
- seszett 13y agoYeah, IMO Natural Earth[0] data is much more valuable, and easy to get into any format one could need. Countries would be covered by the "Admin 0 – Countries" file[1]. [0]http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ [1]http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-cultural-vectors/10m-admin-0-countries/ http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-cultural-vecto...
- nkoren 13y ago> easy to get into any format one could need Okay, I'll bite. How would one get these into SVG? I haven't found anything as straightforward as an SHP->SVG converter.
- humbyvaldes 13y agoI don't see Alaska and Hawaii in the namerica / us
- dc_ploy 13y agoI prefer my maps in SVG. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:SVG_maps_by_country http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:SVG_maps_by_count...
- um304 13y agoI like Pakistan map (https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/blob/master/asia/pk/1024.png https://github.com/djaiss/mapsicon/blob/master/asia/pk/1024....), thanks for adding my country :)
- isalmon 13y agoNicely done! Minor things, but I was surprised to find Russia in 'Asia' folder. In most cases (sport for example) it's considered Europe.
- lake99 13y agoThis, of course, brings us to the question, "What are continents?" [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34
- robinhood 13y agoAgain, depending on the wikipedia article, Russia can be considered in Europe, in Asia or in Eurasia. So tricky. Which norm to follow?
- anonymfus 13y agoIf you have distinction between Europe and Asia, you put Russia and some other smaller countries in both. If you have only Eurasia, you don't have problem. You don't put Europe, Asia and Eurasia in one flat classification, because Eurasia includes Europa and Asia.
- youknowwhoami 13y agoas a chinese, I don't understand why you make China and Taiwan separately.
- robinhood 13y agoBecause I based this work on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1 and they list this as a separate entity.
- seszett 13y agoProbably because they are two different countries for all intents and purposes, and from the point of view of most of the world except for mainland China. The fact that Taiwan citizens need a (kind of) visa to enter mainland China is also a clear message that they aren't citizens of the same country. Any other claim is political bullshit.
- jeffpersonified 13y agoWhy not vector/SVG?
- djfergus 13y agoMY only shows peninsula Malaysia - missing the Borneo States...
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoHow is this better than existing projects like Wikimedia’s vector maps? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:SVG_maps_by_country http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:SVG_maps_by_count...
- frank_boyd 13y agoThanks! This should have been the post...
- redox_ 13y agoAny chance you could build a 2013-ready (flat?) version of timezonepicker.com ?